7ème Arrondissement de Paris

History

Construction of Hôtel de Salm, 1787.

The Hôtel de Salm was built from 1782 to 1787 by the architect Pierre Rousseau on behalf of the German Prince Frederick of Salm-Kyrburg. This building combines majesty and charm: a courtyard surrounded by a portico with columns opening with a triumphal arch on the rue de Lille, and a villa Campanian embellished with a garden along the Seine. While the Revolution took the Prince of Salm-Kyrburg to the scaffold, the Hotel was acquired in 1804 by the Earl of Lacepède to install the seat of the Legion of Honor created two years earlier by Napoleon Bonaparte. It is devastated by a fire on May 23, 1871, at the same time as the Tuileries and the Town Hall. Determined, general Vinoy then grand chancellor launches a subscription to the army legionnaires and medalists to restore the building.
In 1925, the Museum of the Legion of Honor and Orders of Chivalry moved to the site of the stables of the palace. The Salm Hotel is classified today as historical monuments.

Exposition Universelle in 1889, the entrance arch is known as the Eiffel Tower

During the 17th century, French high nobility started to move from the central Marais, the then-aristocratic district of Paris where nobles used to build their urban mansions (see Hotel de Soubise), to the clearer, less populated and less polluted Faubourg Saint-Germain.

The district became so fashionable within the French aristocracy that the phrase le Faubourg has been used to describe French nobility ever since. The oldest and most prestigious families of the French nobility built outstanding residences in the area, such as the Hôtel Matignon, the Hôtel de Salm, and the Hôtel Biron.

After the Revolution many of these mansions, offering magnificent inner spaces, many receptions rooms and exquisite decoration, were confiscated and turned into national institutions. The French expression “les ors de la Republique” (literally “the golds of the Republic”), referring to the luxurious environment of the national palaces (outstanding official residences and priceless works of art), comes from that time.

During the Restauration, the Faubourg recovered its past glory as the most exclusive high nobility district of Paris and was the political heart of the country, home to the Ultra Party. After the Fall of Charles X, the district lost most of its political influence but remained the center of the French upper class‘ social life.

During the 19th century, the arrondissement hosted no less than five Universal Exhibitions (1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900) that have immensely impacted its cityscape. The Eiffel Tower and the Orsay building have been built for these Exhibitions (respectively in 1889 and 1900).

Carnavalet Museum

The Carnavalet Museum (French: Musée Carnavalet) in Paris is dedicated to the history of the city. The museum occupies two neighboring mansions: the Hôtel Carnavalet and the former Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau. On the advice of Baron Haussmann, the civil servant who transformed Paris in the latter half of the 19th century, the Hôtel Carnavalet was purchased by the Municipal Council of Paris in 1866; it was opened to the public in 1880. By the latter part of the 20th century, the museum was full to capacity. The Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau was annexed to the Carnavalet and opened to the public in 1989.

Carnavalet Museum is one of the 14 City of Paris’ Museums that have been incorporated since January 1, 2013 in the public institution Paris Musées. It’s closed for renovation till the end of 2019.

Collections of the Carnavalet Museum

In the courtyard, a magnificent sculpture of Louis XIV, the Sun King, greets the visitor. Inside the museum, the exhibits show the transformation of the village of Lutèce, which was inhabited by the Parisii tribes, to the grand city of today with a population of 2,201,578.

The Carnavalet houses the following: about 2,600 paintings, 20,000 drawings, 300,000 engravings and 150,000 photographs, 2,000 modern sculptures and 800 pieces of furniture, thousands of ceramics, many decorations, models and reliefs, signs, thousands of coins, countless items, many of them souvenirs of famous characters, and thousands of archeological fragments. … The period called Modern Time, which spans from the Renaissance until today, is known essentially by the vast amount of images of the city. … There are many views of the streets and monuments of Paris from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, but there are also many portraits of characters who played a role in the history of the capital and works showing events which took place in Paris, especially the many revolutions which stirred the capital, as well as many scenes of the daily life in all the social classes.

Lutetia

Long narrow canoes made from a single tree trunk (pirogues), dating back long before the first written description of the village (known at the time as Lutèce) in A.D. 52 in Julius Caesar’s De bello Gallico
A beautiful fourth-century bottle used for perfume, wine, or honey

The Medieval city

Scale model of the Île de la Cité in the 16th century

An ornate chest from the 13th century, which probably came from the royal Abbey of Saint Denis
A well-preserved 14th-century sculpture of the head of the Virgin Mary, peaceful and contemplative, despite the tumultuous events that decimated the city at that time: the Hundred Years’ War and the Great Plague of 1348

The Renaissance and Wars of Religion

Paintings from the 16th century depicting famous men and women of the time, including Francis I, Catherine de’ Medici, and Henry IV.
A painting of the Pont Neuf in about 1660 showing Parisians on horseback or on foot. A vendor is showing his wares to a crowd of interested on-lookers, and a man is walking hunched over with a bundle on his back.
Several paintings of Madame de Sévigné, who was considered the most beautiful woman in Paris.

The French Revolution

La Fête de la Fédération, le 14 juillet 1790, au Champs de Mars, Charles Thévenin (1764–1838)

The famous uncompleted painting by Jacques-Louis David, The Tennis Court Oath (1789), portraying a pivotal event in French history when members of the National Assembly swore an emotional oath that they would not disband until they had passed a “solid and equitable Constitution.“ This event is often regarded as the beginning of the French Revolution.
Paintings showing the people’s revenge on the Bastille, a dungeon that had become “a symbol of the arbitrariness of royal power.”
Paintings or sculptures of the famous actors in the drama of the Revolution, including Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, and the royal family.
A painting of death by guillotine at the Place de la Révolution, by Pierre-Antoine Demauchy: the fate that struck King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, the Royalists, the Girondins, the Hébertists, the Dantonists, Robespierre and his followers, and many others.
Personal effects belonging to Marie-Antoinette.
A paper on which Robespierre had partially written his signature when he was seized by soldiers of the National Convention.

Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century

Le Marché et la Fontaine des Innocents (1822), John James Chalon (1778–1854), Musée Carnavalet

Napoleon’s favorite case of toiletries
Paintings of early-19th-century Paris
A painting depicting one of the most important moments of the July Revolution: The Seizing of the Louvre, 29 July 1830, by Jean-Louis Bézard
Marvelous sculptures of Parisians of the time, some realistic portrayals, others caricatures, by Jean-Pierre Dantan
The ornate cradle of the imperial prince, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie
Illustrated posters from the Belle Epoque
Realistic paintings of late 19th-century Paris.
A gold watch-chronometer that belonged to Émile Zola
A painting of the construction of the Statue of Liberty, which was shipped to the United States in pieces.
Paintings of the Exposition Universelle, including one of the Eiffel Tower, which was specifically built for this event. It was used in the 1970 Walt Disney animated film “Aristocats“.

Paris in the twentieth century

Après l’office à l’église de la Sainte-Trinité, (around 1900), Jean Béraud (1849–1935)

A reconstruction, with original furniture, of the room where Marcel Proust wrote In search of lost time
Photographs of 20th-century Paris by Eugène Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson
A stylized painting of a crowded bistro of the mid-1900s, by the naturalized Japanese artist, Leonard Foujita
A photograph in daguerreotype, The Forum of the Halles, taken by two American photographers in 1989 for an exhibit at the Carnavalet celebrating the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography

The present buildings

Hôtel de Carnavalet

In 1548, Jacques des Ligneris, President of the Parliament of Paris, ordered the construction of the mansion that came to be known as the Hôtel Carnavalet; construction was completed about 1560. In 1578, the widow of Francois de Kernevenoy, a Breton whose name was rendered in French as Carnavalet, purchased the building. In 1654, the mansion was bought by Claude Boislève, who commissioned the well-known architect, François Mansart, to make extensive renovations. Madame de Sévigné, famous for her letter-writing, lived in the Hôtel Carnavalet from 1677 until her death in 1696.

Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau

The Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau was also built in the middle of the 16th century. It was originally known as the Hôtel d’Orgeval. It was purchased by Michel Le Peletier and passed on eventually to his grandson, Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau was a representative of the nobility in the Estates-General of 1789. In 1793, Le Peletier voted for the execution of Louis XVI, and was murdered, in revenge for his vote, the same day of the execution of the king on January 20, 1793.

The heart of the Carnavalet Museum
Carnavalet’s central garden

Grand Châtelet

The Grand Châtelet, seen from rue Saint-Denis , 1800

The Grand Châtelet of Paris was a fortress built by Louis VI on the right bank of the Seine , at the end of the rue Saint-Denis. It was demolished in the early nineteenth century and was replaced by the current Place du Châtelet. It housed the police headquarters, dungeons and the first morgue of the capital.

“The Grand-Châtelet was, after the gibbet of Montfaucon , the most sinister building of Paris, as much by its appearance and its destination as by its neighborhood which made of this district the most fetid place of the capital.“

As early as the 9th century, access to the two bridges that linked the Ile de la Cité to the banks of the Seine, were protected by two castles , first wooden, then stone: The Grand Châtelet, north, to protect access to the Grand Pont (now the Change Bridge ); the Petit Châtelet , to the south, to protect the access to Petit-Pont. In Paris, when the name “Châtelet” is used without further precision, it is always the Grand Châtelet that is involved.

History

The Grand Châtelet of Paris.

The Grand Châtelet of Paris around 1800.

The Pont au Change painted in 1756 from the Pont Notre-Dame by Raguenet.

Middle Ages

In the fourth century, the city, which was still called Lutetia , was concentrated in the island of the City , protected by Roman fortifications consisting of a wall of 2.50 m thick. It appears that at that time no works protected access to wooden bridges, which can be quickly destroyed or burned in the event of an attack. It was in 877 that Charles the Bald had strengthened the fortifications of Paris to protect the city from the incursions of the Normans who multiplied. The Roman ramparts were restored, the fortified bridges and their batteries tightened to prevent the passage of the boats. He also erected wooden towers forming castles to protect the ends of the bridges.

As a result, when the Norman invaders went up the Seine in November 885, they encountered an impassable fortress . The first ferocious offensives were repulsed with determination by the defenders, it followed a long siege of Paris (885-887) to try to reduce the inhabitants to the famine and bring them to capitulate. In February 886, a great flood of the Seine carried the Petit-Pont , isolating the twelve defenders remained in the tower of what will become the little Châtelet . They fought fiercely to the last and were all slaughtered. Charles the Fat ended up arriving with his troops and bought the departure of the Normans who left to ravage Burgundy.

The wooden towers were replaced by stone constructions around 1130 by Louis VI le Gros . The Grand Chatelet formed a solid, almost square fortress, with a courtyard in the middle and diverted gates, surrounded by deep ditches filled with living water, fed by the Seine . Two towers flanked the two angles towards the suburb. It was intended to protect the northern outlet of the Grand-Pont .

The Counts of Paris lived there until the end of the 12th century, until their replacement by the Provost of Paris. From 1190, the construction of the enclosure of Paris by Philippe-Auguste made this fortress useless to the defense of the city. It established the seat of the jurisdiction of the Provost of Paris in charge of police and criminal justice, including prisons and torture rooms where the “question” applied. The provost was divided into four sections: the “civil park hearing”, the “presidential”, the “council chamber” and the “criminal chamber”. After their meeting in a single body, these various jurisdictions took the name of “Cour du Chatelet”.

Under the reign of Saint Louis , from 1250 to 1257, the Grand Châtelet was repaired and considerably enlarged. On May 29, 1418, during the civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians , thanks to the betrayal of a certain Perrinet Leclerc and the support of artisans and academics, Paris was delivered to Jean de Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, captain a troop of partisans of the Duke of Burgundy. On the 12th of June, 1418, the Burgundian faction, which besieged the great and the small Châtelet, massacred all the Armagnac prisoners who were shut up there; their bodies, thrown from the tops of the towers, were received at the tip of the spears.

By a royal ordinance of January 1318 , the King of France Philip V le Long enjoined the clerk of the Chatelet to ensure “that a candle was maintained during the night at the door, the palace of this court, to thwart companies perpetrators who perpetuated themselves on the square , then the busiest of the capital . “

Modern era

By his edict of 1684, Louis XIV gathered at Châtelet all sixteen feudal old justices and six former ecclesiastical justices. The Grand Châtelet was rebuilt. It had been decided that during the reconstruction, the court would sit at the Grand Augustins , but the monks would not give up their convent. It was decided to siege it and seize it by force. There followed several fights and fierce assaults, in which a large number of religious were killed. The victory remained with the party of the court, which settled there provisionally.

After these new reconstructions, only a few obscure and harmless towers remained of the old fortress. In 1756, a marble table containing the words “Tributum Cæsaris” was still visible above the opening of an office under the arcade of the Grand Châtelet. It was there, no doubt, that all the taxes of Gaul were centralized, a custom which seemed to have been perpetuated, since the decree of the council of 1586 mentions the “customary rights of the land to be paid to the Chatelet vineyards. “

The massacre of September 1792

Massacre of the prisoners of the Grand Châtelet on September 2nd, 1792.

At the time of the Revolution , the prisoners incarcerated at the Chatelet had the reputation of being great criminals: when the rioters opened the prison doors to release the prisoners on July 13, 1789, they took care not to attack the Chatelet. There were three hundred and five inmates in May 1783 and three hundred and fifty in May 1790. After having tried the first accused of the crime of lese-nation , the Court of Justice Chatelet was abolished by the law passed on August 25, 1790. His duties ceased January 24, 1791, but the prison remained. During the massacres of the prisons, on September 2nd, 1792 , out of the two hundred and sixty-nine prisoners incarcerated at the Chatelet, two hundred and sixteen prisoners were cut down or slaughtered by the rioters.

“Those prisoners hearing the day before that the prisons would soon be emptied, believing to find their freedom in the public confusion, thinking that on the approach of the enemy the royalists could open the door to them, had, on September 1 , make their preparations for departure; several, the package under his arm, were walking in the courtyards. They went out but otherwise. A frightful storm arrives at 7 o’clock in the evening from the Abbey at Chatelet; an indistinct massacre begins with sabers and rifles. Nowhere were they more pitiless. “

All were formidable criminals, but none of them had been involved in aristocratic plots. After the massacre, the bodies were piled up on the banks of the Change bridge to be transported to the quarries of Montrouge , near Paris.

The jails

Damiens judged at the Chatelet.

The Grand Chatelet was one of the principal prisons of Paris. In its eastern part, the cells were divided into three categories: the common rooms upstairs, those called “secret” and the pits of the bottom. During the occupation of Paris by the English, an order of Henry VI of England , dated May 1425, lists its parts or cells. The first ten were the least horrible, they had for names: The Channels, Beauvoir, La Motte, La Salle, Butchers, Beaumont, Grièche, Beauvais, Barbarie and Gloriette . The following were much more hateful, some names are eloquent: The Well, the Forgetting, Entre-deux-huis, the Gourdaine, the Crib . Finally, the last two were particularly atrocious:

The pit , also known as Chausse d’hypocras , in which the prisoners were descended by means of a pulley. It looks like it was shaped like an inverted cone. The prisoners were constantly in the water and could not stand or lie down. It usually died after a fortnight of detention.
End of ease that was filled with garbage and reptiles. In 1377, Honoré Paulard, a Parisian bourgeois, was brought down there, accused of having poisoned his parents, his sisters and three others to inherit it. He died there in one month.

The height was that these imprisonments were priced. Prisoners were required to pay for the night’s jail during their stay and a supplement for bedding. The tariff varied according to his condition: “count, knight banneret, knight, squire, lombard, jew or other. “

Several famous people were imprisoned at the Châtelet:

The morgue

In the fifteenth century, morgue has the meaning of face, mine. The prisoners brought into the lower cells of the Chatelet of Paris were “morgués” by their jailers, that is to say, stared with insistence and probably with arrogance and contempt, in order to be able to identify them in the event of escape or recidivism. By extension, the name “morgue” was assigned to these cells. The deposition of the body of the Chatelet is mentioned for the first time by a sentence of the Provost of Paris of December 23, 1371. Another sentence of the Provost of Paris, September 1 , 1734, associates the lower jail of the Chatelet to the identification of corpses .

Subsequently said cells having been transferred to another part of the Châtelet, the “morgue” was affected, in the eighteenth century, the exhibition of bodies found on public roads or drowned in the Seine . About fifteen bodies were found each night in the seventeenth century. The hospitable girls of St. Catherine were required to wash them and have them buried in the cemetery of the Innocents. An opening in the door allowed them to be recognized “by pinching their noses”. In 1804, the police prefect Dubois moved the morgue Quai du Marché-Neuf .

Demolition

Last vestiges of the Grand Châtelet rue de la Saulnerie (1855)

Because of its dilapidated state and the conditions of detention of the prisoners who were detained there, the demolition of the Grand Châtelet had been envisaged by the old regime as early as 1780. The jails having been decommissioned following the massacres of September 2, 1792, the prosecutor of the commune Pierre Louis Manuel demanded its demolition the 9th of September following. However, this did not actually start until 1802, starting with the dungeons.

Other buildings, still occupied by the courts of first instance and appeal of the second district of Paris, were in their turn demolished only between 1808 and 1810 but the street Trop-Va-Qui-Dure was destroyed only in 1813. Some vestiges still remained in 1857, between the quai de la Mégisserie , the Place du Châtelet and rue Pierre-à-Poisson (now rue de la Saulnerie before disappearing). On the site of the Grand Châtelet was built the Place du Châtelet between 1855 and 1858 and the Théâtre du Châtelet inaugurated in 1862.

Demolition of the Grand Châtelet de Paris

3ème Arrondissement de Paris

The 3rd arrondissement of Paris, situated on the right bank of the River Seine, is the smallest in area after the 2nd arrondissement. The arrondissement contains the northern, quieter part of the medieval district of Le Marais (while the 4th arrondissement contains Le Marais’ more lively southern part, notably including the gay district of Paris). The oldest surviving private house of Paris, built in 1407, is to be found in the 3rd arrondissement, along the rue de Montmorency.

The ancient Jewish quarter, the Pletzel (פלעצל, little place in Yiddish) which dates from the 13th century begins in the eastern part of the 3rd arrondissement and extends into the 4th. It is home to the Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme and the Agoudas Hakehilos synagogue designed by the architect Guimard. Although trendy boutiques are now taking up many of the storefronts, there are still landmark stores selling traditional Jewish foods.

A small but slowly expanding Chinatown inhabited by immigrants from Wenzhou centers on the rue au Maire, near the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers housed in the medieval priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs.

Place de Vosges

Place des Vosges, Place Royale until 1800, is a square in the Marais, part of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements in Paris. Designed by Louis Mettezeau, she is the “sister” of the Ducale square in Charleville-Mézières. It is the oldest place in Paris, just before Place Dauphine.

It bears this name in honor of the department of the Vosges, the first department to have paid the tax under the French Revolution and the sending of the first national volunteers, from the district of Remiremont, to defend the homeland in danger.

The square has been classified as a historic monument since October 26, 1954.

History

Charles VI

At the beginning of the 14th century, the building that became the Hôtel des Tournelles was merely a house facing the hôtel Saint-Pol. Pierre d’Orgemont, seigneur de Chantilly and chancellor of France and the Dauphiné under Charles VI, or perhaps his eldest son Pierre, rebuilt it in 1388. It was bequeathed to the younger Pierre in 1387. This house may have formerly been the property of Jean d’Orgemont, the presumed father of the elder Pierre. On 19 March 1387 Pierre d’Orgemont divided his lands among his ten children, leaving the maison des Tournelles to his eldest son Pierre, bishop of Paris, who was already living there. After his father’s death in 1389, the bishop sold the house on 16 May 1402 for 140,000 gold écus, to the duc de Berry, brother of Charles V. In 1404 the duc de Berry gave it to his nephew Louis, the duc d’Orléans and the younger brother of Charles VI, in exchange for the hôtel de Gixé on rue de Jouy. The duc d’Orléans was assassinated on 23 November 1407 and the hôtel passed to his heirs, becoming the property of Charles VI, who lived there from 1417 onwards. The house took the name Maison royale des Tournelles.

Louis XII

With the Treaty of Troyes, the English entered Paris on 18 November 1420. After Charles VI‘s death on 22 October 1422 in Paris, the hôtel was seized and became the primary residence of John of Lancaster, the Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry V of England and regent for the kingdom of France until his nephew Henry VI came of age. In 1436, after the English left Paris, Charles VII gave the hôtel to his Orléans cousins. When John died in 1467, the property passed to his widow, Marguerite, Duchess of Rohan. In 1486 Marguerite left the buildings to her son Charles of Orléans, father of Francis I of France. It thus became a royal residence once again. In 1563 it was still called the “hôtel des Tournelles et d’Angoulème”. It thus passed to John of Orléans, count of Angoulême, and was for a time called the hôtel d’Angoulême (not to be confused with the later Hôtel d’Angoulême Lamoignon).

Different kings of this era stayed for short or long periods at the hôtel – Louis XI made a few brief stays there:

Item, the following Thursday [1 June 1440], the Delphin [the future Louis XI] came to Paris and was lodged at the ostel [sic] des Tournelles, hard by the porte Sainct-Anthoine, and stayed only one night, not showing himself in Paris, nor his father the king coming either…Fleeing his coronation festivities, the new king took refuge there on Tuesday 1 September 1461 after dinner but left for Tours by 25 September.

Nor did Louis’ successors Charles VIII of France and Louis XII of France stay there much, though the latter did die there on 1 January 1515. Francis I of France did not live there, preferring the château de Fontainebleau, the Louvre and the castles on the River Loire. The Hôtel des Tournelles was used as a residence by his mother Louise of Savoy then by his mistress Anne de Pisseleu, a tradition repeated by Henry II of France when he made it the residence of Diane de Poitiers. In 1524 the magician Cornélius Agrippa lived there under the name Agrippa de Nettesheim, as doctor and astrologer to Louise de Savoie, to whom he made dead and living people appear.

Henry II on his deathbed at the hôtel des Tournelles

The hôtel saw several lavish and unusual festivals, such as the “danse macabre” on 23 August 1451 before Charles, Duke of Orléans. Henry II celebrated his coronation there in 1547 and then the signing of the Treaties of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. The last festival held there was also in 1559, to mark the double marriage of Élisabeth de France to Philip II of Spain and of the king’s sister Marguerite de France to the duke of Savoy. On this occasion, a tournament was organised on 29 June on rue Saint-Antoine, the widest street in Paris at the time and thus known as the La Grant rue St Anthoine, with the same dimensions as in the present day. During a joust in front of the hôtel de Sully (level with what is now number 62), Henry II was seriously wounded by an accidental lance thrust by Gabriel de Lorges, count of Montgomery, captain of the king’s Scottish guard. Moved to the hôtel des Tournelles, the king died there on 10 July 1559 in terrible agony, despite attempts to save him by both the famous surgeon Ambroise Paré and the surgeon to the king of Spain, Andreas Vesalius.

Catherine de Médici, an Italian princess who had grown up in Roman palaces, disliked the Hôtel des Tournelles’s medieval appearance and took Henry’s death as a pretext to sell it off. Gaining total power as regent to her young sons, the heirs of Henry, she turned the property into an arsenal, then had it closed and demolished. On 28 January 1563, in the name of her son Charles IX of France, she issued letters patent ordering the demolition. This took place in stages and financed her major works on the more modern royal residences in Paris, particularly on the Madrid and the Tuileries. Some of the materials from the old hôtel were reused in the construction of the palace. The stables were reused to create the important Marché aux chevaux, horse market, where two thousand horses were sold every Saturday.

Certain parcels of land from the Hôtel’s estate were sold off, though a large estate remained and was used in military training. In January 1589 the estate was used to exercise the mercenaries charged with defending Paris against Henry IV of France. It also became a traditional site for bloody duels – on 27 April 1578, at 5 am, three favourites of Henry III of France beat three favourites of the duke of Guise in a duel there, with all six men ending up killed or seriously wounded.

Henry IV

In August 1603, Henry IV tried to re-use part of the Hôtel’s buildings to create a silk, gold and silver factory, bringing in 200 Italian artisans for this purpose, but the attempt failed. Finally, on 4 March 1604, he issued an edict instructing his minister Sully to measure out the site. He donated a parcel of 6,000 toises (yards) to his main noblemen, who built pavilions there, on the condition that they stuck to the layout, materials and main dimensions laid down by the architects Androuet du Cerceau and Claude Chastillon. On 29 March 1605 Henry wrote to Sully:

My friend, I pray you to remember what we talked of together lately, of this place where I wish that I wish to be built before the lodge which serves as a horse market for manufactures, to the end that if you have not marked out there – for renting the rest of the other places to and rent for the rest, it is doubtless that they will be unfaithful and I pray you to give me the news.

Thus the place Royale, later known as the Place des Vosges, was born.

1er Arrondissement de Paris

Musée de l’Orangerie

Jardin des Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois

The 1st arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements (administrative districts) of the capital city of France. Situated principally on the right bank of the River Seine, it also includes the west end of the Île de la Cité. The arrondissement is one of the oldest in Paris, the Île de la Cité having been the heart of the city of Lutetia, conquered by the Romans in 52 BC, while some parts on the right bank (including Les Halles) date back to the early Middle Ages. It is the least populated of the city’s arrondissements and one of the smallest by area, a significant part of which is occupied by the Louvre Museum and the Tuileries Gardens. Much of the remainder of the arrondissement is dedicated to business and administration.

Quartiers

Each of the 20 Paris arrondissements is divided into four quarters (quartiers). The 1st Arrondissement is comprised of four quartiers as follows:

– Quartier Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois

From Planet Bpm : The Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois district is the heart of the French capital. It spreads from the western tip of Île de la Cité to the Jardin des Tuileries, the biggest, oldest garden in Paris. Fluctuat nec mergitur. (“She is battered by the waves, but does not sink”) was the motto of the boatmen’s guild which had its headquarters here during the reign of Hugh Capet, and the phrase subsequently became the city’s own motto.

Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois surrounds the Louvre, whose buildings house a significant portion of French history. Originally built around 1190 by Philip II, ‘Augustus’, as a fortress to contain royal treasure before the monarch left to join the Crusades, the Louvre is now devoted entirely to culture, displaying Western art from the Middle Ages to 1848, treasures of Antiquity and, since 2005, Islamic art. The Church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, after which the district is named, adjoins the Louvre and can be visited outside service times. The grounds of the Jardin des Tuileries host three major Paris museums: the Musée de l’Orangerie, devoted to Monet’s Nymphéas and the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collections, the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which exhibits contemporary art and photography, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs with its significant fashion and textiles collection as well as a more recent section devoted to advertising.

Île de la Cité in the eastern part of the district also has some emblematic historical buildings such as the Conciergerie, the first royal residence in the city and later a forbidding prison under the Terror. It is a stone’s throw from Sainte-Chapelle, a masterpiece of the Gothic style with richly hued stained glass windows built by St Louis within the Palais de la Cité, now the Palais de Justice law courts.

– Quartier Les Halles

History

Design of Les Halles in 1863, By Victor Baltard.^[5]

View of Les Halles from Saint-Eustache in 1870

Paris – Les Halles

The wholesale market

Les Halles was the traditional central market of Paris. In 1183, King Philippe II Auguste enlarged the marketplace in Paris and built a shelter for the merchants, who came from all over to sell their wares. The church of Saint-Eustache was constructed in the 16th century. The circular Halle aux Blés (Corn Exchange), designed by Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières, was built between 1763 and 1769 at the west end of Les Halles. Its circular central court was later covered with a dome, and it was converted into the Bourse de Commerce in 1889.^[6] In the 1850s, Victor Baltard designed the famous glass and iron buildings, Les Halles, which would last until the 1970s. Les Halles was known as the “Belly of Paris”, as it was called by Émile Zola in his novel Le Ventre de Paris, which is set in the busy marketplace of the 19th century.

Major conversion

Rue Pierre Lescot outside the Forum des Halles

Unable to compete in the new market economy and in need of massive repairs, the colourful ambience once associated with the bustling area of merchant stalls disappeared in 1971, when Les Halles was dismantled; the wholesale market was relocated to the suburb of Rungis. Two of the glass and cast iron market pavilions were dismantled and re-erected elsewhere; one in the Paris suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne, the other in Yokohama, Japan.^[6]

The site was to become the point of convergence of the RER, a network of new express underground lines which was completed in the 1960s. Three lines leading out of the city to the south, east and west were to be extended and connected in a new underground station. For several years, the site of the markets was an enormous open pit, nicknamed “le trou des Halles” (trou = hole), regarded as an eyesore at the foot of the historic church of Saint-Eustache. Construction was completed in 1977 on Châtelet-Les-Halles, Paris’s new urban railway hub. The Forum des Halles, a partially underground multiple story commercial and shopping center, opened at the east end of the site in 1979 and remains there today. A public garden covering four hectares opened in 1986.^[6] Many of the surrounding streets were pedestrianized.

Paris Les Halles: an urban transit hub to redevelop

Underground rail system in Châtelet-Les Halles

Gare de Châtelet – Les Halles is Paris’s most used rail station, serving 750,000 travelers on an average weekday. The buildings and their surroundings have been criticized for their design. In 2002 Mayor Bertrand Delanoë announced that the City of Paris would begin public consultations regarding the remodeling of the area, calling Les Halles “a soulless, architecturally bombastic concrete jungle”.^[7]^[8]

A design competition for the Forum and gardens was held, with entries from Jean Nouvel, Winy Maas, David Mangin, and Rem Koolhaas. Mangin’s design for the gardens, which proposed replacing the landscaped mounds and paths of the 1980s design with a simplified pattern of east-west pedestrian promenades and a large central lawn, was selected. The plan also includes extending the pedestrianized area further east to include all the streets bordering the gardens. Another competition was held for the redesign of the Forum. Ten teams submitted plans, and the proposal by Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti was selected in 2007. Their design includes a large undulating glass canopy which will cover the redesigned Forum.^[8] STIF and RATP began plans for the remodeling of the Châtelet-Les-Halles station in 2007, and the following year Berger and Anziutti were awarded a contract for redesign of the station.

The station redesign includes new entrances on Rue Berger, Rue Rambuteau, and Place Marguerite de Navarre, an expanded RER concourse, and improved pedestrian circulation. Construction began in 2010 on a project which includes the gardens, Forum, and station, and is scheduled to continue through 2016. The clients are the City of Paris, RATP, which operates the Paris Metro, and La Société Civile du Forum des Halles de Paris, which operates the Forum.^[6]

In film

Part of the actual demolition of the site is featured in the 1974 film Touche pas à la femme blanche (Don’t Touch the White Woman!), which iconoclastically restages General Custer‘s ‘last stand’ in a distinctly French context in and around the area.

In 1977, Roberto Rossellini made a 54-minute documentary film that testified to the public’s response to the demolition of Les Halles and the construction of Centre Georges Pompidou. “The result was a sceptical vision rather than a pure celebration.”^[9]

The open-air market and Baltard’s pavilions were digitally reconstructed for the 2004 film Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement), which was set after the First World War.

Les Halles, the new heart of Paris Les Halles, the new heart of Paris
Des Racines des Alles: “Le nouveau coeur de Paris”, 12 March 2015
Paris-Les Halles Les Halles redevelopment project
Laure-Emmanuelle HUSSON, Le top 10 des centres commerciaux en France, Challenges, 13 mars 2014
Plate from Baltard, Victor; Callet, Félix (1863), Monographie des Halles centrales de Paris, construites sous le règne de Napoléon III et sous l’administration de M. le Baron Haussmann, sénateur, préfet du département de la Seine [Monograph on the central Halles of Paris, constructed under the reign of Napoleon III and under the administration of Baron Haussmann, senator, prefect of the Seine Department] (in French), Paris: A. Morel
Parimage, “Les Halles, The New Heart of Paris”. Mairie de Paris and SemPariSeine, July 2012.
Rose, Michel (July 27, 2010). “Revamp of the Belly of Paris meets resistance – Reuters, July 27, 2010”. Uk.reuters.com. Retrieved 2012-01-26.
Riding, Alan. “For Paris, the Newest Look Is a Canopy”. New York Times, July 7, 2007. Accessed December 25, 2012 [1]
“Roberto Rossellini. Filming Beaubourg”. Retrieved 14 November 2015.

– Quartier Palais-Royal (Royal Palace District)

Formed for the first time at the time of the French Revolution , the district of Palais-Royal was formed of four districts :

the district of Saint-Honoré Church ;
the district of Saint-Roch church ;
the district of the Jacobin church , rue Saint-Honoré ;
the district of the Saint-Philippe-du-Roule church .

In 1790 this district takes the revolutionary name of section of the Mountain .

By prefectural decree of May 10, 1811, the section of the Mountain, now section of the Butte-des-Moulins , which was located in the former 2nd arrondissement of Paris takes the name of district of the Palais Royal .
Its limits are then:

Starting from Place Vendôme and following the streets of Neuve-des-Petits-Champs , Neuve-des-Bons-Enfants and Saint-Honoré to Place Vendôme.

The law of June 16, 1859 assigns this administrative district to the ^1st arrondissement , with the following limits:

A line starting from the rue de Rivoli, and following the axis of the streets of Dauphin and Neuve-Saint-Roch, Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, the Place des Victoires, the streets of Croix-des-Petits-Champs, Marengo, and Rivoli to the point of departure.

Situation and limits

The administrative districts of the ^1st arrondissement.

The district of the Palais-Royal is formed of a rectangle, limited to the West by the street Saint-Roch, to the East by the streets of Marengo and Croix-des-Petits-Champs, to the North by the street of Little Champs, and to the South by the Rue de Rivoli.

In the heart of the ^1st district, the district is between the neighborhoods of Place-Vendôme in the West, Les Halles in the East, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois in the South, Vivienne, in the 2nd district, in the North.

The two main North-South axes are Rue de Richelieu in the west of the Jardin du Palais Royal and Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs in the East. The garden being crossed by no way, besides the lanes that limit it, only rue Saint-Honoré crosses the neighborhood from side to side in the east-west direction. The Haussmannian breakthrough that is the Avenue de l’Opera cuts the grid drawn in the seventeenth century oblique. The rue Coquillière, which connects the district Les Halles was pierced in the twelfth century at the time of the construction of the enclosure of Philippe Auguste; it is the oldest way of the district.

Main buildings

The district is organized around the eponymous Royal Palace and its garden , open to the public.

Administration

Ministry of Culture
Constitutional Council
Board of state
Dispute Tribunal
Bank of France
Portes Saint-Honoré (successively destroyed)

Private Hotels

Religious life

Tourism

Theaters

Library

Delamain Bookstore

Cafes, restaurants, cabarets, bars

Closed house (closed)

The White flower

Covered passageways

Véro-Dodat Gallery

Along the Garden of the Palais-Royal

Clockwise:

Montpensier Gallery
Beaujolais Gallery
Valois Gallery
Garden Gallery , Gallery of Orleans and Gallery of Cour-d’Honneur , parallel, all three between the garden and the main courtyard.

Access to the Palais Royal Garden

Clockwise:

Second crown around the Jardin du Palais-Royal

Clockwise:

Fountains

Public art

Equestrian statue of Joan of Arc (Pyramids Square)
Equestrian statue of Louis XIV (Place des Victoires)
The Two Plateaux , commonly called The Buren Columns
The Nightclub Kiosk

In the subway :

The thought and the soul huicholes (station Royal Palace – Louvre Museum )
PILI ( Pyramids station)
Tissuration n ° 14 ( Pyramides station)

Famous businesses

Fauré Le Page (closed), on the site of the Art Nouveau building at the corner of the streets of Richelieu and Montpensier.
Louvre department stores (closed), now the Louvre des antiquaires
House Bacqueville
Kitsuné House

– Quartier Place Vendôme.

The section of the Place Vendôme was created in 1790, administrative district which became in 1792 the section of the Spades then in 1795 the area of the Place-Vendôme, located then in the 1st district of Paris whose limits started from the place Vendôme and following on the left, the streets of Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, Louis-le-Grand, Chaussée-d’Antin, Saint-Lazare, Arcade, Madeleine, Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and Saint-Honoré. ‘in the Place Vendôme ¹ .

A new administrative district is created by the imperial decree of November 1 , 1859, whose annexed map defines the district as: “[Quartier] Place Vendome [sic] . A line starting from the rue de Rivoli and following the axis of the streets of [sic] Saint-Florentin, Richepance and Duphot. New-Capucines streets, Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. Neuve-Saint-Roch, of the Dauphin. And from Rivoli to the point of departure ² .“

François Mansart

François Mansart,

detail of a double portrait of Mansart and Claude Perrault,

by Philippe de Champaigne

François Mansart (23 January 1598 – 23 September 1666) was a French architect credited with introducing classicism into Baroque architecture of France. The Encyclopædia Britannica cites him as the most accomplished of 17th-century French architects whose works “are renowned for their high degree of refinement, subtlety, and elegance”.

Mansart, as he is generally known, made extensive use of a four-sided, double slope gambrel roof punctuated with windows on the steeper lower slope, creating additional habitable space in the garrets that ultimately became named after him—the mansard roof.

Buildings : Château de Balleroy, Temple du Marais, Château de Maisons, Church of the Val-de-Grâce
Projects: Château de Blois
Design : plans to redesign the Louvre and the royal mausoleum at Saint-Denis

Career

François Mansart was born to a master carpenter in Paris. He was not trained as an architect; his relatives helped train him in as a stonemason and a sculptor. He is thought to have learned the skills of architect in the studio of Salomon de Brosse, the most popular architect of Henry IV‘s reign.

Mansart was highly recognized from the 1620s onward for his style and skill as an architect, but he was viewed as a stubborn and difficult perfectionist, tearing down his structures in order to start building them over again. Only the richest could afford to have him work for them, as Mansart’s constructions cost “more money than the Great Turk himself possesses”.

The only surviving example of his early work is the Château de Balleroy, commissioned by a chancellor to Gaston, Duke of Orléans, and started in 1626. The duke himself was so pleased with the result that he invited Mansart to renovate his Château de Blois (1635). The architect intended to rebuild this former royal residence completely, but his design was stymied and only the north wing was reconstructed to Mansart’s design, cleverly using classical orders. In 1632, Mansart designed the Church of St. Mary of the Angels using the Pantheon as an inspiration.

Most of Mansart’s buildings were subsequently reconstructed or demolished. The best preserved example of his mature style is the Château de Maisons, which uniquely retains the original interior decoration, including a magnificent staircase. The structure is strictly symmetrical, with much attention given to relief. It is thought to have heralded and inspired the 18th-century Neoclassicism.

In the 1640s, Mansart worked on the convent and church of the Val-de-Grâce in Paris, a much coveted commission from Anne of Austria. His alleged profligacy led to his being replaced with a more tractable architect, who basically followed Mansart’s design.

In the 1650s, Mansart was targeted by political enemies of the prime minister Cardinal Mazarin, for whom Mansart frequently worked. In 1651, they published “La Mansarade”, a pamphlet accusing the architect of wild extravagance and machinations.

After Louis XIV‘s accession to the throne, Mansart lost many of his commissions to other architects. His designs for the remodeling of Louvre and for the royal mausoleum at Saint-Denis were never executed, in the case of the Louvre because he would not submit detailed plans. Some of his plans were subsequently reused by his grandnephew, Jules Hardouin Mansart. Mansart died in Paris in 1666.

The Temple du Marais, sometimes known as the Temple Sainte-Marie, or historically, as the Church of Sainte Marie de la Visitation, is a Protestant church located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, in the district of Le Marais at 17 Rue Saint-Antoine. It was originally built as a Roman Catholic convent by the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, whose sisters were commonly called the Visitandines. The church was closed in the French Revolution and later given to a Protestant congregation which continues its ministry to the present. The closest métro station is Bastille

From Wikipedia:

4ème Arrondissement de Paris

Vaugondy’s map of Paris (4e arrondissement) – 1760

The 4th arrondissement of Paris is located on the right bank of the Seine . It is bordered on the west by the 1st arrondissement , on the north by the 3rd arrondissement , on the east by the 11th and 12th arrondissements and on the south by the Seine and the 5th arrondissement . The eastern part of Île de la Cité and Île Saint – Louis are also part of the 4th arrondissement. Île Saint-Louis is the result of the union in the Middle Ages of Île Notre-Dame and Île aux Vaches. According to the General code of local authorities, it also bears the name of “arrondissement of the Hôtel-de-Ville” but this name is rarely used in the daily life.

The first dwellings on the Ile de la Cité may date from the Gallic period. In Roman times, Île de la Cité is connected to both banks by bridges located on the site of the current Little Bridge and Notre Dame Bridge . The route of Rue Saint-Martin corresponds to that of the main Roman road.

The extension of the houses on the right bank dates back to the fifth century with the construction of the sanctuary of St. Gervais. In the 9th century, Saint-Gervais is protected by a wall that was probably located at the rue de Rivoli and extend to the Seine , rue des Barres to the rue de la Tacherie . The town develops around the market of Greve (current place of the Hotel-de-Ville ) from the 11th century.

In 1111 , the city was plundered by Robert I , Count of Meulan, who destroyed the two bridges of the island. Louis VI decided to rebuild further west the bridge on the right bank and protect it with a chatelet. The construction of Pont au Change at the site brought about the appearance of a new district around the Châtelet where butchers settled.

Until the beginning of the 17th century, Île Saint-Louis was uninhabited and was a pasture area for livestock. It was fully sold under the reign of Louis XIII (1610-1643). It was at this time that it took its current name in honor of the king.

The current boundaries of the 4th arrondissement were set in 1860 , during the Second Empire , following the law of the June 16 1859 giving rise to a new division of Paris into 20 districts .

For more of this article read Arrondissement 4e – translated from Wikipedia

Museums

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

A two-year overhaul turned the three-floor hunting museum from a musty old-timer into something really rather special. When it reopened in 2007, it had kept the basic layout and proportions of the two adjoining 17th-century mansions it occupies, but many of its new exhibits and settings seem more suited…

Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme

It’s fitting that a museum of Judaism should be lodged in one of the grandest mansions of the Marais, for centuries the epicentre of local Jewish life. It sprung from the collection of a private association formed in 1948 to safeguard Jewish heritage after the Holocaust. Pick up a free audio-guide in English to help you navigate through displays illustrating ceremonies…

Musée Carnavalet

Here, 140 chronological rooms depict the history of Paris, from pre-Roman Gaul to the 20th century. Built in 1548 and transformed by Mansart in 1660, this fine house became a museum in 1866, when Haussmann persuaded the city to preserve its beautiful interiors. Original 16th-century rooms house Renaissance collections, with portraits by Clouet and furniture and pictures…

Musée des Arts et Métiers

The ‘arts and trades’ museum is, in fact, Europe’s oldest science museum, founded in 1794 by the constitutional bishop Henri Grégoire, initially as a way to educate France’s manufacturing industry in useful scientific techniques. Housed in the former Benedictine priory of St-Martin-des-Champs, it became a museum proper in 1819; it’s a fascinating, attractively laid out…

Atelier Brancusi

When Constantin Brancusi died in 1957, he left his studio and its contents to the state, and it was later moved and rebuilt by the Centre Pompidou. His fragile works in wood and plaster, the endless columns and streamlined bird forms show how Brancusi revolutionised sculpture.

The Centre Pompidou

The primary colours, exposed pipes and air ducts make the Centre Pompidou one of the best-known sights in Paris. The then-unknown Italo-British architectural duo of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers won the competition with their ‘inside-out’ boilerhouse approach, which put air-conditioning, pipes, lifts and the escalators on the outside…

Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP)

Probably the capital’s best photography exhibition space, hosting retrospectives by Larry Clark and Martine Barrat, along with work by emerging photographers. The building, an airy mansion with a modern extension, contains a huge permanent collection. The venue organises the biennial Mois de la Photo and the Art Outsiders festival of new media web art in September.

Galerie du Jour – Agnès B.

‘We say gallery, but we could also say a place for showing the other faces and the side issues of things’ explained Agnès B. in November 1984, when she launched La Galerie du Jour a few steps from the Centre Pompidou. The designer and founder of the wildly successful eponymous label shows here anything that pleases her – painting, sculpture, contemporary art and…

Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève

Suzanne Tarasiève opened her vast Loft19 in 2008, part of the rapid artistic expansion of the Belleville neighbourhood, within a few years became the favourite destination for young alternative galleries in Paris. Her second space, opened in the Marais in May 2011, is a stronghold for the most powerful representatives of the Parisian art market…

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Ropac’s main base is in Salzburg, but he also runs this attractive Paris gallery, featuring American Pop and neo-Pop by Warhol, Tom Sachs and Alex Katz, along with European artists such as Ilya Kabakov, Sylvie Fleury and Gilbert & George.

Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne

Centre Georges-Pompidou from Notre-Dame de Paris, 2011

The Musée National d’Art Moderne National Museum of Modern Art) is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. It is among the most visited art museums in the world and one of the largest for modern and contemporary art.

In 1937, the Musée National d’Art Moderne succeeded the Musée du Luxembourg, established in 1818 by King Louis XVIII as the first museum of contemporary art created in Europe, devoted to living artists whose work was due to join the Louvre 10 years after their death. Imagined as early as 1929 by Auguste Perret to replace the old Palais du Trocadero, the construction of a museum of modern art was officially decided in 1934 in the western wing of the Palais de Tokyo. Completed in 1937 for that year’s International Exhibition of Arts and Technology, it was temporarily used for another purpose, since the exhibition of national and foreign art indépendant was then preferably held in the Petit Palais and the Musée du Jeu de Paume. Although due to open in 1939, construction was eventually interrupted by the war; following the nomination of its first Chief Conservator in September 1940, the museum partially opened in 1942 with only a third of the collection brought back from some national collection caches hidden in the province. But its real inauguration didn’t take place until 1947, after World War II and the addition of the foreign schools collection of the Musée du Luxembourg, which had been held at the Musée du Jeu de Paume since 1922.

In 1947, then housed in the Palais de Tokyo, its collection was dramatically increased by its first director, Jean Cassou, thanks to his special relationship with many prominent artists or their families, such as Picasso and Braque. With the creation of the Centre Pompidou, the museum moved to its current location in 1977.

The museum has the second largest collection of modern and contemporary art in the world, after the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with more than 100,000 works of art by 6,400 artists from 90 countries since Fauvism in 1905. These works include painting, sculpture, drawing, print, photography, cinema, new media, architecture, and design. A part of the collection is exhibited every two years alternately in an 18,500-square-metre (199,000 sq ft) space divided between two floors, one for modern art (from 1905 to 1960, on the 5th floor), the other for contemporary art (from 1960, on the 4th floor), and 5 exhibition halls, on a total of 28,000 m² (300,000 sq ft) within the museum. The Atelier Brancusi is located in its own building adjacent to the Centre Pompidou.^[2]

The works displayed in the museum often change in order to show to the public the variety and depth of the collection. Many major temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art have taken place on a separate floor (the 6th) over the years, among them many one-person exhibitions. Since 2010, the museum has also displayed unique, temporary exhibitions in its provincial branch, the Centre Pompidou-Metz, in a 10,000-square-metre (110,000 sq ft) space divided between 3 galleries and since 2011, in a small mobile museum touring the province.

Collections

Modern art (1905–1960)

Many styles of modern art, including Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, Abstract art, Surrealism are represented with works by Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Le Douanier Rousseau, Paul Signac, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Frida Kahlo, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Carlo Carrà, Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Rodchenko, František Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Jacques Villon, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Georges Rouault, Balthus, Max Beckmann, Constantin Brâncuși, Alexander Calder, Chaïm Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, Kees van Dongen, Jean Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, André Breton, Magritte, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Alberto Giacometti, René Iché, Nicolas de Staël, André Masson, Yves Tanguy, Jean Tinguely, Simon Hantaï, Yves Klein, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and Francis Bacon.

Contemporary art (art from 1960 on)

Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme, Conceptual art and other tendencies or groups are represented with works by Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, Rauschenberg, Dan Flavin, Eduardo Arroyo, Dan Graham, Daniel Buren, George Brecht, Arman, César, Bill Viola, Anish Kapoor, Wim Delvoye, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Yaacov Agam, Vasarely, John Cage, Cindy Sherman, Dieter Roth, Beuys, Roy Lichtenstein, Burhan Dogancay, Dubuffet, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Gilbert & George, David Hockney and Louise Bourgeois.

Works of architecture and design include Philippe Starck, Jean Nouvel, and Dominique Perrault.

An icon of 20th-century architecture

Designed as an “evolving spatial diagram” by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, the architecture of the Centre Pompidou boasts a series of technical characteristics that make it unique in the world – the inspiration, even the prototype, of a new generation of museums and cultural centres. It is distinctive firstly in the way it frees up the space inside, with each floor extending through the building entirely uninterrupted by load-bearing structures. The whole of each 7 500 m2 floor is thus available for the display of works or other activities, and can be divided up and reorganised at will, ensuring maximum flexibility. With its use of steel (15 000 tons) and glass (11 000 m²) and the externalisation of its load-bearing structure together with circulation and services, it was a truly pioneering building for its time, an heir to the great iron buildings of the Industrial Age. In many ways futuristic, the Centre Pompidou is heir to the architectural utopias of the 1960s, exemplified in the work of Archigram and Superstudio. Its innovative, even revolutionary character has made the Centre Pompidou one of the most emblematic buildings of the 20th century.

Centre Georges Pompidou - entry side
Centre Georges Pompidou - entry side
The queue half an hour before opening
The glass tube passage way
The queue one hour after opening
Sacre Coeur - Montmartre
Sacre Coeur - Montmartre
Kazimir Malevich
Wassily Kandinski
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Yayoi Kusama
Performance Art - Yayoi Kusama
Cy Twombly
Marcel Duchamp
Piet Mondrian
Susan Delaunay
Susan Delaunay
Susan Delaunay
Henri Matisse
Rem Koolhas
Rem Koolhas
Rem Koolhas
Rem Koolhas
Gerhardt Richter
Gerhardt Richter
Gerhardt Richter
Gerhardt Richter
Gerhardt Richter
Gerhardt Richter
Gerhardt Richter
Gerhardt Richter room
Art & Language
Art & Language
Art & Language
Eva Hesse
Joseph Beuys - Joseph Beuys, Plight, Installation: Felt, grand piano, chalkboard, thermometer, 310 x 890 x 1813 cm, original 1985, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London; rebuild 2006 at Paris Centre Pompidou
Joseph Beuys - Joseph Beuys, Plight, Installation: Felt, grand piano, chalkboard, thermometer, 310 x 890 x 1813 cm, original 1985, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London; rebuild 2006 at Paris Centre Pompidou
Joseph Beuys - Joseph Beuys, Plight, Installation: Felt, grand piano, chalkboard, thermometer, 310 x 890 x 1813 cm, original 1985, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London; rebuild 2006 at Paris Centre Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou - entry side

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Pompidou Centre website

Google maps – Pompidou Centre

Musée d’Orsay – A museum in a station

View of the Musée d’Orsay.

www.musee-orsay.fr

Collections : French and European art from 1848 to 1914

Number of objects : 79,470 of which 5,765 on deposit – 4,000 works permanently presented

Architect : Gae Aulenti

Location : 62, rue de Lille, 75007 Paris

The Musée d’Orsay is a national museum inaugurated in 1986, located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris along the left bank of the Seine. It is installed in the former Orsay train station, built by Victor Laloux from 1898 to 1900 and refitted as a museum by decision of the President of the Republic Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The collections present Western art from 1848 to 1914, in all its diversity: painting, sculpture, decorative arts, graphic art, photography, architecture, etc. It is one of the largest museums in Europe.

The museum has the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world, with nearly 1,100 paintings ² in total of more than 3,450, and can be seen as masterpieces of painting and sculpture such as Edouard Manet’s Breakfast on the Grass and Olympia, a proof of Degas’s Fourteen-year-old Little Dancer, The Origin of the World, A Burial in Ornans, The Painter’s Studio in Courbet, Card players Cezanne or five paintings of the series of Cathedrals Rouen Monet and Mill Ball Galette Renoir.

Temporary monographic or thematic exhibitions periodically cover the work of an artist, a current or a question in the history of art. An auditorium hosts diverse events, concerts, cinema, shadow theater, conferences and seminars and shows specifically for a young audience.

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A museum in a station

The history of the Musée d’Orsay, of its building is quite unusual. In the centre of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was installed in the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. So the building itself could be seen as the first “work of art” in the Musee d’Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914.

The station

On the eve of the 1900 World Fair, the French government ceded the land to the Orleans railroad company, who, disadvantaged by the remote location of the Gare d’Austerlitz, planned to build a more central terminus station on the site of the ruined Palais d’Orsay. In 1897, the company consulted three architects: Lucien Magne, Emile Bénard and Victor Laloux. The project was a challenging one due to the vicinity of the Louvre and the Palais de la Légion d’honneur: the new station needed to be perfectly integrated into its elegant surroundings. Victor Laloux, who had just completed the Hôtel de Ville in Tours, was chosen as winner of the competition in 1898.

Anonyme Sous le plancher métallique de la gare d'Orsay 1899 aristotype (épreuve au citrate) H. 11,9 ; L. 16,9 cm Paris musée d'Orsay, don de la SNCF, 1986

Under the metal floor of Orsay railway station

The station and hotel, built within two years, were inaugurated for the World Fair on July 14th, 1900. Laloux chose to mask the modern metallic structures with the façade of the hotel, which, built in the academic style using finely cut stone from the regions of Charente and Poitou, successfully blended in with its noble neighbours. Inside, all the modern techniques were used: ramps and lifts for luggage, elevators for passengers, sixteen underground railtracks, reception services on the ground floor, and electric traction. The open porch and lobby continued into the great hall which was 32 metres high, 40 metres wide and 138 metres long.

The Gare d’Orsay © Musée d’Orsay

From 1900 to 1939, the Gare d’Orsay was the head of the southwestern French railroad network. The hotel received numerous travellers in addition to welcoming associations and political parties for their banquets and meetings. However, after 1939, the station was to serve only the suburbs, as its platforms had become too short for the modern, longer trains that appeared with the progressive electrification of the railroads.

From station to museum

The Gare d’Orsay then successively served different purposes : it was used as a mailing centre for sending packages to prisoners of war during the Second World War, then those same prisoners were welcomed there on their returning home after the Liberation. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka’s The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud-Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt.

The hotel closed its doors on January 1st, 1973, not without having played a historic role: the General de Gaulle held the press conference announcing his return to power in its ballroom (the Salle des Fêtes).

Projet Guillaume Gillet-René Coulon pour la construction d'un hôtel à l'emplacement de la gare (c) Musée d'Orsay - Fonds Urphot - droits réservés

Project by Guillaume Gillet and René Coulon

In 1975, the Direction des Musées de France already considered installing a new museum in the train station, in which all of the arts from the second half of the 19th century would be represented. The station, threatened with destruction and replacement by a large modern hotel complex, benefitted instead from the revival of interest in nineteenth-century architecture and was listed on the Supplementary Inventory of Historical Monuments on March 8, 1973. The official decision to build the Musée d’Orsay was taken during the interministerial council of October 20, 1977, on President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s initiative. The building was classified a Historical Monument in 1978 and a civil commission was created to oversee the construction and organisation of the museum. The President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, inaugurated the new museum on December 1st, 1986, and it opened to the public on December 9th.

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The Gallery

Summary (translated from Wikipedia)

Brief History

Large gallery of the Musée d’Orsay.

The museum is located on the site of the Palais d’Orsay, built in 1810 and decorated with frescoes by Théodore Chassériau ³, which in 1840 hosts the State Council on the ground floor and two years later late the Court of Accounts on the first floor. It was burned down in 1871 during the Paris Commune and left in the state of ruins until the construction by Victor Laloux of the station of Orsay, former terminus of the Company of the Railway of Paris in Orleans, to welcome the visitors and foreign delegations from the 1900 World Exhibition.

Its esplanade, to the west, was arranged in 1985 and endowed with numerous statues including the group called Statues of the 6 continents, initially installed on the terrace of the palace of Trocadéro during the world exhibition of 1878 ⁴.

The Musée d’Orsay opened in the converted train station, the December 9, 1986. To allow its transformation into a museum of arts of the nineteenth century, according to the will of the President of the Republic Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the building was reconfigured from 1983 to 1986 by architects Renaud Bardon, Pierre Colboc and Jean-Paul Philippon, laureates of an architectural competition organized in 1979, then joined by the Italian interior designer Gae Aulenti.

In the night of October 6, 2007 during the Nuit Blanche, individuals broke into the museum and seriously damaging a painting by Claude Monet, The Bridge of Argenteuil, dating from 1874, making a tear of 10 cm ⁵. The painting has been restored since.

Facade of the Musée d’Orsay.

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Collections

Alexandre Charpentier, paneling in the dining room of Adrien Bénard, mahogany, oak, poplar, gilded bronze and enamelled stoneware (1900-1901).

Decorative arts

Main article: Decorative arts at the Musée d’Orsay (1848-1889).

Inaugurated at the Marsan Pavilion of the Louvre in 1905, the Museum of Decorative Arts was considered in 1879 on the site attributed to the station of Orsay in 1897, which will finally find this museum vocation in 1986. The Gate of Hell of Rodin, whose plaster is visible at the median level – terrace Rodin, was to constitute the monumental entrance.

In 1977, a collection of decorative arts objects from the 1848-1914 period was created at the Musée d’Orsay. Apart from the Charpentier dining room of 1900, reconstituted in a clean space ( period room ), furniture and objects are shown out of context. Consisting of representative works of the production of ceramics, glassware, jewelery and furniture, this collection testifies to the mutation of the production of objets d’art related to the industrial revolution, that of the fine arts applied to the industry. It has some masterpieces long unknown or poorly considered and also exhibits evidence of the exceptional quality of luxury industries of that time. The museum division of the collections of objects of art distinguishes by their location those produced under the Second Empire (1852-1870) and in the first two decades of the Third Republic (1870-1940) of those corresponding to the Art Nouveau style (to from 1890).

Painting

Honoré Daumier,
Crispin and Scapin (1858 – 1860).

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier,
Campaign of France 1814 (1864).

Henri Fantin-Latour,
Tribute to Delacroix (1864).

Gustave Courbet,
The Origin of the World (1866).

Claude Monet,
The Pie (1868-1869).

Gustave Caillebotte,
The planers parquet (1875).

Alfred Sisley,
The Flood at Port-Marly (1876).

Edgar Degas,
The Star, or the Dancer on Stag, (1878).

Paul Sérusier,
The Talisman (1888).

Vincent van Gogh,
Starry night on the Rhone (1888).

The Musée d’Orsay exhibits and preserves the largest collection of Impressionist paintings (more than 480 paintings) ⁶ and post-Impressionists (more than 600 paintings ² cloisonnists, neo-Impressionists, Symbolists, Nabis …) at world, as well as outstanding paintings of the Barbizon School, realistic, naturalistic, orientalist and academic, including foreign schools. Nearly 5,200 paintings make up the collection, but a large number of works, including some 1,720 paintings , including about 100 non-localized or destroyed, are deposited in public buildings or provincial museums, such as 20 of the 95 paintings ⁷ of Vuillard, 21 of Bonnard’s 87 paintings , 19 of 83 paintings by Renoir or 33 of Maurice Denis’s 79 paintings.

This non-exhaustive list lists the main painters represented at the Musée d’Orsay with the number of their works painted in the collections as well as the title of their main achievements, whether or not they are exhibited, given the regular renewal of the clashes. This list also mentions pastels, for the artists concerned: indeed, although not belonging to the painting department, a certain number of pastels are exhibited in the permanent collections of the museum.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema : 2 paintings
Cuno Amiet : 4 paintings including Schneelandschaft
Frédéric Bazille : 6 paintings (the majority of his paintings are at the Fabre Museum ), including Family Reunion , L’Atelier de Bazille and La Robe rose
Émile Bernard : 12 paintings including Moisson by the sea and Symbolic self-portrait
Arnold Böcklin : 1 painting, Diane’s Hunt
Giovanni Boldini : 6 paintings including Count Robert de Montesquiou and Madame Charles Max
Pierre Bonnard : 66 paintings and 2 pastels including the screen Women in the Garden, The Bourgeois Afternoon, The Lodge, The Pastoral Symphony, Woman sleeping on a bed and The Boxer (portrait of the artist)
Eugène Boudin : 18 paintings and 72 pastels
William Bouguereau : 11 paintings including Dante and Virgil, the Birth of Venus and Equality before Death
George Hendrik Breitner : 2 paintings
Jules Breton : 2 paintings, The Reminder of Gleaners and The Blessing of Wheats
Ford Madox Brown : 1 painting
Rupert Bunny : 1 painting
Edward Burne-Jones : 2 paintings including The Wheel of Fortune
Alexandre Cabanel : 7 paintings including the Birth of Venus
Gustave Caillebotte : 6 paintings and 1 pastel including Planers parquet and View of roofs (effect of snow)
Eugène Carrière : 85 paintings, including The Painter’s Family, The Sick Child, Intimacy
Mary Cassatt : 1 painting and 5 pastels
Paul Cézanne : 45 paintings including The Gulf of Marseille seen from L’Estaque, Montagne Sainte-Victoire, The Card Players, The Woman with the coffeepot, Apples and oranges, Portrait of the artist with a pink background, Maincy Bridge, Baigneurs, The hangman’s house in Auvers-sur-Oise, Seated peasant , Still life with the kettle, Achille Emperaire, one of the five paintings on the theme of card players and Self-portrait (circa 1875)
Théodore Chassériau : 5 paintings (the majority of his paintings are in the Louvre), including Le Tepidarium
Lovis Corinth : 2 paintings
Camille Corot : 23 paintings (the majority of his paintings are in the Louvre), including A morning. The dance of the nymphs , The morning. Cow-keeper , In the evening. Far Tower and The Cart. Souvenir of Marcoussis
Gustave Courbet : 32 paintings including L’Atelier du peintre, A burial in Ornans and The Origin of the world
Thomas Couture : 6 paintings including The Romans of Decadence
Henri-Edmond Cross : 8 paintings including The Golden Islands and Cypresses in Cagnes
Charles-François Daubigny : 9 paintings including La Neige et Moisson
Honoré Daumier : 12 paintings and 1 pastel including Crispin and Scapin, La blanchisseuse and Don Quichotte and the dead mule
Edgar Degas : 42 paintings and 47 pastels including L’Absinthe, The Café-concert to ambassadors, Family Portrait (The Bellelli Family), The Woman at the coffeepot, The Bathers and The dance class
Eugène Delacroix : 5 paintings (the majority of his paintings are in the Louvre) including Lions Hunt (sketch) and Tiger Hunt
Maurice Denis : 46 paintings and 3 pastels including the 6 panels of The History of Psyche , the 6 panels of the decoration of the chapel of the College Sainte-Croix du Vésinet, the 4 panels of L’Eternel Summer, Tribute to Cézanne , Portrait of Yvonne Lerolle, The minuet of Princess Maleine, The Muses and Landscape with green trees
André Derain : 2 paintings (the majority of his paintings are in the National Museum of Modern Art), including Charing Cross Bridge
Thomas Eakins : 1 painting
Albert Edelfelt : 3 paintings including Louis Pasteur
James Ensor : 2 paintings
Henri Fantin-Latour : 22 paintings and 2 pastels including Around the piano, Coin de table, Tribute to Delacroix, A workshop in Batignolles
Paul Gauguin : 22 paintings, 3 pastels and 2 stained glass windows including Self-portrait with the yellow Christ, The white horse, Women of Tahiti, Arearea (Joyeusetés), The Alyscamps, Self-portrait with the hat (1893) and the Belle Angela
Nikolay Nikolaevich Gay : 1 painting, The Calvary
Jean-Léon Gérôme : 9 paintings including Young Greeks making beating cocks
Henri Gervex : 7 paintings and 1 pastel
Armand Guillaumin : 15 paintings and 3 pastels
Osman Hamdy Bey : 1 painting
Vilhelm Hammershoi : 2 paintings
Ferdinand Hodler : 3 paintings including Der Holzfäller (The woodcutter)
Winslow Homer : 1 painting, Summer Night
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres : 4 paintings (the majority of his paintings are in the Louvre), including The source and Venus in Paphos
Johan Barthold Jongkind : 7 paintings
Fernand Khnopff : 2 paintings
Gustav Klimt : 1 painting
Lucien Levy-Dhurmer : 1 painting and 16 pastels, including Calanque (six o’clock in the evening)
Max Liebermann : 1 painting
Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta : 4 paintings
Maximilien Luce : 12 paintings including A street of Paris in May 1871
Edouard Manet : 39 paintings and 12 pastels including Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe , Olympia , Bull Fight , The Balcony , Berthe Morisot with the bouquet of violets, The Fife Player, Portrait of Émile Zola, Lola de Valence , On the beach , Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé, Moonlight on the port of Boulogne, Suzanne Manet on his piano , Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Auguste Manet, The Escape of Rochefort and Reading
Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier : 32 paintings including Campaign of France 1814
Meyer de Haan : 2 paintings
John Everett Millais : 2 paintings
Jean-François Millet : 22 paintings and 4 pastels including The Gleaners, The Angelus, Shepherd with his flock and The Spring
Piet Mondrian : 1 painting and 1 pastel
Claude Monet : 70 paintings and 1 pastel (the majority of his paintings are in the Marmottan Monet museum), including The railway bridge at Argenteuil , Rue Montorgueil, in Paris. Feast of June 30, 1878, The bridge of Argenteuil , Hotel Roches Noires. Trouville, Gare Saint-Lazare, London, Parliament. Fog in the fog, Carrières-Saint-Denis, Poppies, Regattas in Argenteuil, Women in the garden, Lunch on the grass, The Pie, The pavement of Chailly , Mrs. Louis Joachim Gaudibert, The Villas in Bordighera, Water Lilies, green harmony, 5 paintings from the series of Rouen cathedrals, The Turkeys and Self-portrait
Gustave Moreau : 8 paintings (the majority of his paintings are in the Gustave Moreau museum), including Galatée and Orphée
Berthe Morisot : 7 paintings and 1 pastel (the majority of his paintings are at the Marmottan Monet museum)
Edvard Munch : 1 painting
Mihály Munkácsy : 1 painting
Camille Pissarro : 41 paintings and 5 pastels including Self-portrait, The Red Roofs
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes : 30 paintings and 2 pastels including The poor fisherman , Young Girls by the sea and The dream
Odilon Redon : 76 paintings and 20 pastels including the 15 panels of the dining room of the castle of Domecy, The chariot of Apollo , The Buddha , Baroness Robert de Domecy and The shell
Pierre-Auguste Renoir : 64 paintings and 4 pastels including Bal du moulin de la Galette, Study: Chest, sun effect, The swing, Dance in the city, Dance in the country, Girls at the piano, The bathers and The boy at cat
Ilia Repin : 1 painting, The Great Duke Michel
Jozsef Rippl-Ronai : 3 paintings and 2 pastels, including French soldiers on the move
Félicien Rops : 1 painting and 1 pastel
Douanier Rousseau : 3 paintings (the majority of his paintings are at the Musée de l’Orangerie), including The Charmeuse of snakes and War
Théodore Rousseau : 7 paintings
Ker-Xavier Roussel : 4 paintings and 8 pastels
Santiago Rusiñol y Prats : 2 paintings
Théo van Rysselberghe : 4 paintings
John Singer Sargent : 3 paintings including La Carmencita
Valentin Serov : 1 painting
Paul Sérusier : 15 paintings and 1 pastel including Le Talisman, Breton Eve and Breton wrestling
Georges Seurat : 17 paintings and sketches, including Le cirque
Paul Signac : 14 paintings and 1 pastel of which Woman with the umbrella , the red buoy and Women with the well
Alfred Sisley : 37 paintings and 2 pastels including The Flood at Port-Marly, The Machine Path, Louveciennes, Poplar alley around Moret-sur-Loing, Les Regates at Moseley, Village of Neighbors, Passerelle d’Argenteuil, The Canal Saint-Martin, Rue de la Chaussée in Argenteuil, View of the Canal Saint-Martin, The Forge in Marly-le-Roi and the Rest at the edge of a stream. Edge of wood
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida : 1 painting, Return of fishing: towing the boat
Léon Spilliaert : 2 pastels
Alfred Stevens : 7 paintings and 1 pastel of which what is called the vagrancy
August Strindberg : 2 paintings
Franz von Stuck : 2 paintings
Henry Ossawa Tanner : 3 paintings
James Tissot : 8 paintings including The Circle of the Rue Royale, Portrait of the Marquis and the Marquise de Miramon and their children and Meeting of Faust and Marguerite
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec : 20 paintings (the majority of his paintings are at the Toulouse-Lautrec museum), including two panels for the barracks of Goulue, the Fair of the Throne in Paris , Jane Avril dancing , Rousse (The toilet) , Clowness Cha-U-Kao (es) and The bed
Félix Vallotton : 22 paintings including Misia at her dressing table , Le ballon , Self-portrait and Le Poker
Vincent van Gogh : 24 paintings including The House of Van Gogh in Arles, The Italian, Portrait of Dr. Gachet , The Church of Auvers-sur-Oise, Self Portrait (1889), Portrait of Eugene Boch, the Arlesian and Starry night on the Rhone
Maurice de Vlaminck : 2 paintings (the majority of his paintings are at the National Museum of Modern Art) including The gardener and Restaurant de la Machine in Bougival
Édouard Vuillard : 75 paintings and 9 pastels including the triptych Les Lilas, The millstone, The alley , the triptych of Public Gardens , The library , Jeanne Lanvin , The chapel of the Palace of Versailles and In bed
James McNeill Whistler : 3 paintings including Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1
Franz Xaver Winterhalter : 1 painting (the majority of his paintings are at the Palace of Versailles), Mrs Rimsky Korsakov
Ignacio Zuloaga : 4 paintings including Barres in front of Toledo and The Dwarf Doña Mercedes
Anders Zorn : 2 paintings including Nude woman styling

Other artists

William Bouguereau,
Dante and Virgil (1850).

Gustave Courbet,
The Painter’s Workshop (1855).

Jean-François Millet,
Gleaners (1857).

Edouard Manet,
The Lunch on the Grass (1863).

Edouard Manet,
Olympia, (1863).

Auguste Renoir,
Bal de la Galette mill (1876).

Vincent van Gogh,
Self-portrait (1889).

Vincent van Gogh,
The Church of Auvers-sur-Oise, (1890).

Georges Seurat,
The circus (1891).

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,
The bed (around 1892).

Paul Gauguin,
Arearea or Joyeusetés (1892).

Paul Cézanne,
Still life with apples and oranges (1895 – 1900).

The Source, by Ingres.

The Angelus of Millet.

The Fife Player, Edouard Manet.

The Balcony, Edouard Manet.

The Swing, Renoir.

Card players, Paul Cézanne.

Woman at the coffee maker, Paul Cezanne.

The Way to Louveciennes, by Alfred Sisley.

Absinthe, by Edgar Degas.

The coffee concert, Edgar Degas.

The room in Arles, Vincent Van Gogh.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet.

Women of Tahiti, Paul Gauguin.

The snake charmer, Douanier Rousseau.

War, the Douanier Rousseau.

Claude Monet,
London, Parliament. Sun break in the fog (1904).

Paul Signac,
Entrance to the port of La Rochelle (1921).

Click on a thumbnail to enlarge.

Sculpture

Eugene William, Anacreon, 1849-1851, marble.

Charles Cordier, Negro of Sudan, 1857.

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, Sleeping Hebe, 1869, marble.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, The Dance , 1869, group in stone.

Louis-Ernest Barrias, bust of Henri Regnault, 1871.

Jean-Baptiste Hugues, Muse at the Source, 1900.

The six continents, 1878, forecourt of the museum.

Honoré Daumier, busts load of the Celebrities of the Right Middle, towards 1832.

Neoclassicism

Eugene William (Montbard, 1822-Rome, 1905):
- The Reaper, 1849, bronze
- Anacreon, 1849/1851, marble
James Pradier (Geneva, 1792-Bougival, 1852)
- Sappho, 1852, marble
Jean-Jules Salmson , (Paris, 1823-Coupvray, 1902)
- La Dévideuse, 1863, bronze
Gabriel-Jules Thomas (Paris, 1824-1905)
- Virgil, 1861, marble

Romanticism

Pierre-Jean David of Angers (Angers, 1788-Paris, 1856)
- Goethe, 1829-1831, plaster
François Rude (Dijon, 1784-Paris, 1855)
- Napoleon awakening to immortality, 1845, plaster
Auguste Préault (Paris, 1809-1879)
- Ophelia, 1842, bronze

Eclecticism of the Second Empire

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (Valenciennes, 1827-Courbevoie, 1875), 117 sculptures of which:
- Ugolino and his children , 1860, bronze
- Princess Mathilde, 1862, marble
- The Imperial Prince and his dog Nero, 1865, marble
- The Four Parts of the World Supporting the Celestial Sphere, 1868-1872, Lacquered Gum Plaster
- Danse, 1869, group of Echaillon stone deposited from the Opera Garnier
Charles Cordier (Cambrai, 1827-Algiers, 1905)
- Sudan Negro, 1857, onyx, bronze and porphyry
- Capresse des colonies, 1861, onyx, bronze and pink marble
Paul Dubois (Nogent-sur-Seine, 1829-Paris, 1905)
- Florentine singer, 1865, silver-plated bronze
Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (Anisy-le-Chateau, 1824-Sevres, 1887)
- Bust of a woman wearing a tiara, 1860-1870, terracotta
- Sleeping Hebe, 1869, marble group
Auguste Clésinger (Besançon, 1814-Paris, 1883)
- Woman stung by a snake , 1847, marble
Jean-Joseph Perraud (Monay, 1819-Paris, 1876)
- Despair, 1869, marble
Gustave Doré (Strasbourg, 1832-Paris, 1883)
- Joyeuseté , 1881, bronze
Alexandre Falguière (Toulouse, 1831-Paris, 1900)
- The Winner in cock fight, 1864, bronze
- Tarcisius, 1868, marble
- Asia from the series of six continents, 1878, cast iron, parvis of the museum
Antonin Mercié (Toulouse, 1845-Paris, 1916)
- David, 1871, bronze
Hippolyte Moulin (Paris, 1832-Charenton, 1884)
- A find in Pompeii, 1863, bronze
Jean-Baptiste Baujault (The Crèche near Breloux, 1828-1899)
- Young Gaul or Mistletoe year nine, 1870-1875, marble, mistletoe and bronze serp disappeared
Alexandre Schoenewerk (Paris, 1820-1885)
- The Young Tarentine, 1871, marble
- Europe from the series of six continents, 1878, cast iron, forecourt of the museum
Eugene Delaplanche (Belleville, 1839-Paris, 1891)
- Eve before sin, 1869, marble
- Africa from the series of six continents, 1878, cast iron, parvis of the museum
Augustin-Jean Moreau-Vauthier (Paris, 1831-1893)
- Bacchante lying, 1892, marble

Eclecticism of the Third Republic

Jean-Paul Aubé (Longwy, 1837-Cape Breton, 1916)
- Monument to Léon Gambetta, plaster model
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi (Colmar, 1834-Paris, 1904)
- Statue of Liberty, 1889, bronze
- Lion of Belfort, 1900, bronze bas-relief
René de Saint-Marceaux (Reims, 1845-Paris, 1915)
- Genius keeping the secret of the grave , 1879, marble
Jean-Baptiste Hugues (Marseille, 1849-Paris, 1930)
- The Source Museum, 1900, cast iron, marble, bronze
- Oedipus at Colone, 1885.
- ^Lady Rateau bust, patinated plaster
- Vine , terracotta
Emmanuel Fremiet (Paris, 1824-1910)
- Saint-Michel slaying the dragon , 1897, enlarged copper hammered
- Young elephant trapped , 1878, cast iron, forecourt of the museum
Louis-Ernest Barrias (Paris, 1841-1905)
- Bust of Georges Clairin , painter, 1875, terracotta
- The Nubians (Alligator Hunters), 1894, plaster high relief
- Nature unveiling at Science , 1899, marble, onyx, granite, malachite, lapis lazuli.
Theophile Barrau (Carcassonne, 1848-Paris, 1913)
- Suzanne, 1895, marble
Jules Coutan (Paris, 1848-1939)
- Eagle Hunters, 1900, plaster
Jean-Léon Gérôme (Vesoul, 1824-Paris, 1904)
- Gerome performing “The Gladiators”, bronze
- Tanagra, polychrome marble
- Bust of Sarah Bernhardt, tinted marble
- Corinth, polychrome plaster, wax, metal
Denys Puech (Gavernac, 1854-Rodez, 1942)
- Aurora, white and pink marbles.
Alexandre Falguière (Toulouse, 1831-Paris, 1900)
- Dancer, Cléo de Mérode , plaster cast on nature

Realism

Honore Daumier (Marseille, 1808-Valmondois, 1879)
- Celebrities of the Juste Milieu, circa 1832, 36 busts caricatures in colored raw earth
- Ratapoil, around 1851, bronze
Jules Dalou (Paris, 1838-1902)
- The Smith, 1886, study, patinated plaster
- The Republic, 1879, terracotta sketch
- The Great Peasant , 1897-1902, bronze
Constantin Meunier (Etterbeek, 1831-Ixelles, 1905)
- Industry, 1892-1896, bronze relief
- The Harvest , 1895, bronze relief
Henri Bouchard (Dijon, 1875-Paris, 1960)
- The Tank Top, 1905, bronze
Bernhard Hoetger (Hörde, 1874-Beatenburg, 1949)
- The Human Machine , 1902, bronze
Alfred Gilbert (London, 1854-London, 1934)
- Saint George, 1901-1910, bronze and ivory
Anders Zorn (Mora, 1860-1920)
- Figure for a fountain II, 1910, bronze

Impressionism and Auguste Rodin

Rodin, Saint John the Baptist (Orsay Museum).

Rodin, Door of Hell , 1880-1917, plaster.

Paul Gauguin, Oviri, 1894.

Edgar Degas (Paris, 1834-1917), 76 sculptures of which:
- The Little Dancer of fourteen, 1921-1931 after the original of 1881, bronze, tulle, satin
- Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot , 1921-1931, bronze
- Dancer, large arabesque, third time , 1921-1931, bronze
- Woman sitting in an armchair wiping the left armpit , 1921-1931, bronze
- Jockey , 1921-1931, bronze
- Picking apples , 1921-1931, bronze bas-relief
- The tub , 1921-1931, bronze
Auguste Renoir (Limoges, 1841-Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1919) and Richard Guino (Girona, 1890-Antony, 1973)
- Madame Renoir , 1916, polychrome mortar
- Judgment of Paris , 1914, plaster
- Water , 1916, bronze
- Fire , after 1916, bronze
Auguste Rodin (Paris, 1840-Meudon, 1917), 26 sculptures of which:
- Bust of Madame Vicuna , 1917, bronze
- Bust of Jules Dalou , 1917, bronze
- The Bronze Age, 1877, bronze
- Bust of Jean-Paul Laurens , 1917, bronze
- Thought (portrait of Camille Claudel) , 1886-1889, marble
- Fugit amor , circa 1881, small bronze group
- Monument to Balzac , 1898, plaster model
- Saint John the Baptist , 1878, bronze
- the walking man , 1905, bronze
- The Gate of Hell, 1880-1917, High Relief in Plaster
Camille Claudel (Fere-in-Tardenois, 1864-Avignon, 1943)
- The Wall Age, circa 1902, bronze
- Clotho’s torso, circa 1893, plaster
- Old woman’s head, study for Mature age, circa 1890, plaster
- Study II for Sakountala, circa 1886, terracotta
Medardo Rosso (Turin 1858-Milan, 1928)
- Aetas Aurea, 1886, bronze
- Ecce puer, 1906, bronze

Primitivism

Paul Gauguin (Paris, 1848-Atuana, Marquesas Islands, 1903), 30 sculptures and works of art including:
- Be mysterious, 1890, polychrome linden wood
- Mask of Tehura, 1891-1893, polychrome pua wood
- Idol with the shell, 1892-1893, ironwood, mother-of-pearl and bone
- Idol with pearl, 1892-1893, painted and gilded wood, pearl, gold chain
- Oviri (Wild), 1894, partly enamelled stoneware
- Maison du jouir , 1901, 5 reliefs in painted wood of sequoia gigantéa.
Georges Lacombe (Versailles, 1868 – Saint Nicholas of the Woods, 1916)
- Existence, 1894-1896, walnut
- Iris, 1893-1894, polychrome mahogany

Symbolism

Albert Bartholomew (Thiverval, 1848-Paris, 1928)
- Crying little girl , 1894, bronze.
Marie Bashkirtseff (Gawronzi, 1860-Paris, 1884)
- The pain of Nausicaa, 1884, bronze.
Boleslas Biegas (Koziczyn, 1877-Paris, 1954)
- The Sphinx, 1902, plaster relief.
Leonardo Bistolfi (Casale Monferrato, 1859-Turin, 1933)
- The Crib , 1906, plaster,
Arnold Böcklin (Basel, 1827-San Domenico, 1901)
- Shield with the face of Medusa , 1897, papier-mache painted.
Rupert Carabin (Saverne, 1862-Strasbourg, 1932)
- The Savernoise Legend , 1914, pear wood.
Jean Carriès (Lyon, 1855-Paris, 1894)
- Bishop , 1883-1889, bronze.
- Loyse Labé , around 1990, sandstone.
- Fauna , 1893, bronze.
Alexandre Charpentier (Paris, 1856- Neuilly, 1909)
- Louis Welden Hawkins , 1893, bronze.
Henry Cros (Narbonne, 1840-Sèvres, 1907)
- The history of water , 1894, bas-relief in glass paste.
Jean Dampt (Venarey, 1853-1946)
- Towards the ideal through suffering , 1900-1906, pink marble of Comblanchien .
Paul Dardé (Olmet, 1888-Lodeve, 1963)
- The Eternal Pain , 1913, gypsum.
Alfred Drury (London, 1859-Wimbledon, 1944)
- The Spirit of the night , 1898-1905, bronze.
Fernand Khnopff (Montigny-le-Bretonneux, 1858-Brussels, 1921)
- Future , 1898, marble, brass and copper.
Max Klinger (Leipzig, 1857-Grossjena, 1920)
- Cassandra , 1886-1900, bronze.
Maurice Maignan (Beaumont-sur-Sarthe, 1845-Saint-Prix, 1908)
- A beggar , 1897, sitting statuette, bronze.
Pierre-Felix Masseau, (Lyon, 1869-Paris, 1937)
- The Secret , 1894, polychrome mahogany and ivory.
Franz Metzner (Wscherau, 1870-Berlin, 1919)
- The weight of sorrow , around 1912, patinated black plaster
Carl Miles (Lagga, 1875-Lidingö, 1955)
- Young girl with a cat , around 1900, bronze.
- Beggar , around 1900, bronze.
- The fight for life , before 1929, bronze and marble
George Minne (Ghent, 1866-Sint-Martens-Latem, 1941)
- The mason , marble
- Kneeling at the fountain , 1898, bronze
- Porter of addition , 1897, bronze.
Pierre Roche (Paris, 1855-1922)
- The Morgane Fairy , 1904, bronze, lead and marble.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (Dublin, 1848-Cornish, 1907)
- Amor caritas , 1885-1898, bronze.
Franz von Stuck (Tettenweis, 1863-Munich, 1928)
- Ludwig van Beethoven , 1900, polychrome plaster
City Vallgren (Porvoo, 1855-Helsinki, 1940)
- Pain , circa 1893, polychrome oolitic limestone .
- Beggar and her child or misery , 1892, bronze.
- Christ , circa 1889, patinated plaster.
Félix Vallotton (Lausanne, 1865-Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1925)
- Woman holding back her shirt , 1904, bronze
Adolfo Wildt (Milan, 1868-1931)
- Vir temporis acti , 1921, bronze.

Animal Sculpture

Henri-Alfred Jacquemart, Rhinoceros, 1878, forecourt of the museum.

Alfred Barye (Paris, 1839-1882)
Antoine-Louis Barye (Paris, 1795-1855), 34 sculptures of which:
- Lion’s paw raised on a snake, 1832, bronze
- Two bears fighting, 1833, bronze
- Tartar warrior on horseback, 1845, bronze
- Seated lion, 1847, gum-lacquered plaster
- Order, 1854-1855, plaster, wood
- The war, 1855, plaster, wood
Émile-Coriolan Guillemin (Paris, 1841-1907)
- Juno, 1867, bronze bas-relief of a basement of Charles-Guillaume Diehl
Henri-Alfred Jacquemart (Paris, 1824-1896)
- Rhinoceros, 1878, cast iron, forecourt of the museum
Rembrandt Bugatti, (Milan, 1884-Paris, 1916), 61 sculptures of which:
- Panther walking, circa 1904, plaster
- White elephant, 1907, bronze
- Giraffes, 1907, plaster
- Lion of Nubia, circa 1911, plaster
- Two lamas, 1911, bronze

The white bear of François Pompon.

François Pompon, (Saulieu, 1855-Paris, 1933), 131 sculptures of which:
- Polar Bear, 1925, Lens Stone⁸
- Polar bear, 1920, plaster draft
- Polar bear, 1927, bronze
- Hippopotamus, 1918-1931, bronze
- Gray Crane, 1920, bronze
- Owl, 1923, bronze
- Great deer, 1929, plaster

The return to style

Antoine Bourdelle (Montauban, 1861- The Vesinet, 1929)
- Apollo, 1909, gilt bronze
- Penelope, (1907-1926), bronze
- The Force of the Will, (1914-1915), bronze, forecourt of the museum
- The Victory, (1914-1915), bronze, forecourt of the museum
- Herakles Archer, 1909, bronze and gilding, after the second version of 1923, melted by Eugène Rudier in 1924
- Antoine Bourdelle, Herakles archer.
- Bather on a rock, bronze
- The Offering, bronze
Albert Bartholomew (Thiverval, 1848-Paris, 1928)
- Bust of Federico Zandomenighi , painter, 1890, plaster
Joseph Bernard (Vienna, 1866-Boulogne-Billancourt, 1931)
- Water carrier, 1912, bronze
- Dance, 1911-1913, marble relief
Aristide Maillol (Banyuls-sur-Mer, 1861-1944)
- Mediterranean or Thought, 1905-1927, marble
- Ile-de-France, 1925-1933, stone
- Bather with raised arms, 1900, bronze
- Desire, 1905-1907, relief in lead

Photography

The photography collection of the Musée d’Orsay was entirely made from scratch from the late 1970s when the project of transforming the former Orsay railway station into a museum of the XIX ^th century has been taken, no museum fine arts in France does not yet have a section dedicated to photography. It became apparent that this major invention of the XIX ^th century was to take place in the future museum ⁹. The works of many photographers are preserved in the collections of the Musée d’Orsay, including those of Hippolyte Bayard, Édouard Baldus, Christian Bérard, Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, Felix Nadar, Nicephore Niepce, Constant Alexander Fam …

Notes and references

[archive]
↑ ^{a and b} Not including the 414 paintings , sketches and studies of the studio collection of the symbolist painter Alphonse Osbert.
↑ The Louvre retains some frescoes Chassériau, spare the grand staircase, some in the last rooms of the Department of French sculptures.
↑ Statues in front of the Orsay Museum [ archive ] on the Paris 1900 site [ archive ] , accessed March 30, 2014
↑ Drunk, they damage a Monet TF1 [ archive
↑ Including 64 paintings by Gauguin, Van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec.
↑ When searching for “paintings” of an artist in the online catalog of the museum, it is necessary to deduce the deposits of particular collections, as well as the “designation: drawing”, because after 2014 the drawings are kept in the museum of Orsay, rather than the Louvre as before.
↑ According to the original plaster of 1922 exhibited at the Musée de l’Homme
↑ See the history of the constitution of the photography collection at the official site of the Musée d’Orsay [ archive ]
↑ ” The museum of Orsay authorizes the photos … thanks to a tweet of Fleur Pellerin? » [ Archive ] , on metronews.fr/ , March 18, 2015 (accessed April 27, 2015 )
↑ ” The Musée d’Orsay forbade photos … to Fleur Pellerin ” [ archive ] , on lefigaro.fr , March 19, 2015 (accessed April 27, 2015 )
↑ Decree reproduced on the website of the Musée d’Orsay [ archive ]
↑ Decree reproduced on the website of the Musée d’Orsay [ archive ]
↑ Article Site Artclair [ archive ]
↑ Status [ archive ] on the site of the Musée d’Orsay.
↑ Decree of the Minister of Culture and Communication dated 2 May 1979 published in the Official Journal of the French Republic on 18 (appointment of the Director of the public institution of the museum of XIX ^th century from 15 October 1978) .
↑ Decree of 15 March 1986 appointing the director of the Musée d’Orsay.
↑ Decree of 12 August 1994 appointing the director of the Musée d’Orsay.
↑ Order of 9 April 2001 concerning the interim appointment of the director of the Musée d’Orsay.
↑ Decree of 26 November 2001 appointing the Director of the Musée d’Orsay.
↑ Decree of 26 May 2004 appointing the President of the Public Establishment of the Musée d’Orsay.
↑ Decree of 5 July 2007 appointing the President of the Public Establishment of the Musée d’Orsay – Mr. Lemoine (Serge).
↑ Decree of 28 January 2008 appointing the President of the Public Establishment of the Musée d’Orsay – Mr. Cogeval (Guy).
↑ Decree of 15 March 2013 appointing the President of the Public Establishment of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie – Mr. COGEVAL (Guy).
↑ ” Laurence des Cars in Orsay: the new president, this is it! » [ Archive ], on France Culture , March 21, 2017 (accessed April 3, 2017 )
↑ ” The SAMO ” [ archive ] , on http://www.amis-musee-orsay.org [ archive ] (accessed July 4, 2014 )
↑ ( in ) AFMO , ” News & Events – AFMO ” [ archive ] , on AFMO (accessed 29 January 2016 )
↑ ” Musée d’Orsay: Get involved! Join the Circle of Patron Women! ” [ Archive ], on www.musee-orsay.fr (accessed January 29, 2016 )
↑ Notice of the book, on the Orsay Museum site. [ archive ]
↑ “The ideal library # 46:” Modern Olympia “, a pictorial fantasy Catherine Meurisse” article article Télérama [ archive ] , the 26/03/2014.
Album index on the site of its co-publisher Futuropolis. [ archive ]
↑ The book, on the Orsay Museum site. [ archive ]

Musée du Louvre

Official website

Wikipedia

The Louvre or the Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre), is the world’s largest art museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city’s 1st arrondissement (district or ward). Approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres (782,910 square feet). In 2017, the Louvre was the world’s most visited art museum, receiving 8.1 million visitors.

The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a fortress in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to the urban expansion of the city, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function and, in 1546, was converted by Francis I into the main residence of the French Kings. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation’s masterpieces.

The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum was renamed Musée Napoléon, but after Napoleon’s abdication many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic. The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.